Tales of the Madman Underground Themes

Ever feel like your parents don't "get" you? Try having parents that aren't around enough to even try. In Tales of the Madman Underground, part of being a Madman is being abused, neglected, or reje...

When your parents are abusive, alcoholic, and just generally not there, your friends can be more like family than your actual family is. That's how it is for Karl and the rest of his buddies in the...

The members of the Madman Underground may have some serious issues, but one thing's for sure—they're some of the most loyal fictional characters you'll come across. Throughout Tales of the Madman...

When alcohol shows up in literature—especially young-adult literature—it's rarely a good thing. In the case of Karl and his friends, it's downright disastrous. Growing up with parents who are n...

Spoiler alert: A lot of people in Tales of the Madman Underground have identity crises. Duh, of course they do—you found it in the young-adult section. For Karl and his friends, though, the typic...

Thanks to drunken fights, abuse, loss, and grief hitting them at a young age and continuing to haunt their lives, the characters in Tales of the Madman Underground have little choice but to deal wi...

High school—the only educational environment that's a microcosm of every personal bias, division, and special little group that has ever existed in the world. Maybe you wonder if kids back in the...

The book is called Tales of the Madman Underground, so it isn't super surprising that one of its themes is madness. Struggles of the mind are a huge part of this story. We've already talked a lot a...

As you've probably noticed, there's a lot of anger, violence, and abuse in Tales of the Madman Underground. But as bad as the home lives of these kids are, there's a lot of compassion in the mix, t...

Tales of the Madman Underground might take place in the early 1970s, but Lightsburg's families are hardly the Brady Bunch. Imagine the Brady Bunch beating each other with blunt objects and screamin...